


Work/Life Balance

by JoJo



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s03e18 Class in Crime, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-28
Updated: 2012-10-28
Packaged: 2017-11-17 05:37:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/548180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoJo/pseuds/JoJo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hutch turns life coach, but does he know what he's talking about?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Work/Life Balance

**Author's Note:**

> posted to the BCL July 2006

_Over easy._

Now that was funny. In a completely irritating way that was funny. 

Hutch contemplated rejection as the door shut resoundingly in his face. He had finally unjammed his foot when the pressure from within had gotten too much. 

Uncharitably he pressed his ear to the panels to try and hear. If there was any snorting and whispered laughter to be heard it was his imagination. Starsky's front door was thick enough to muffle any but the most ambitious copulations. 

More uncharitable thoughts tumbled into his brain. 

Certain sweet-natured, weekend dates would be very interested to hear about this little set-up. 

_Hah!_

Hutch turned away from the door and looked at the street and the $35,900 car. All of a sudden he was not sure if he felt good or bad about this. Streams of emotion followed each other one by one in the space of ten or twenty seconds. Jealousy, admiration, worry. 

Jealousy was easy enough. Hutch liked to think he had a handle on it. 

"It's negative and destructive, Starsky," he had often wisely proclaimed. 

Starsky would nod. Usually he was chewing something when Hutch was offering up his world view. 

So... Catlin was at the vixen end of foxy and Starsky was getting some and he wasn't. So... good luck to him. 

Admiration was natural enough. He had to hand it to him. Even knowing how much Starsk had wanted that car, and how much they needed help with this inquiry, getting Catlin into bed so quick was an impressive achievement. Right in the middle of a case. Not to mention right in the middle of a new girlfriend. 

Then came the worry, and Hutch tried to fend it off. He had too many other things to think about right now to start being concerned that Starsky's personal life could be heading down the toilet. Nevertheless, as soon as the door had juddered closed, something significant had come to him. 

A smile and an embrace from the past. But for a psychotic felon and a bullet in the head, it would have been such a happy wedding and such a great life. She would have been there sorting out Starsky's life so he didn't have to. 

She hadn't been in Hutch's head for quite a while. 

*

Something about the atmosphere up at Jamison put him in the mood for thinking. 

The windblown campus with its population of scruffy and laidback students took him back to a time not so long ago when his hair had been on his shoulders and his intensity had been matched only by the amount of beer he could put away on a Friday evening. 

Luckily, Hutch had the temperament for research, for patiently following paper trails and working his way through puzzle boards. A lot of the time he had to join in with Starsky's more headlong approach to homicide investigation because they didn't have the luxury of time, but in the records library at Jamison he was briefly in his element. And as he headed back to Dobey's office with a faint sense of regret that he was not still part of the academic life, he set himself to thinking of the important things. 

Love and happiness-ever-after, for instance. 

In this subject he knew he had taken the hardest exam of all much too early, and failed it. He assumed he would take it again at some point because a working life spent wading about in human misery needed balance. But Starsky... what did he intend to do about the important things? 

Hutch was afraid he knew. 

Starsky was going to do Sharon the air-stewardess and Catlin the mad car-saleswoman. He was going to do that over and over again because Terry had gone and Rosey was never coming back. 

*

"So, did you get to keep the car?" 

Hutch asked the question as soon as the business of ordering dinner was out of the way. He had chosen the restaurant because Starsky let him and the usual discussions had gone out the window. They had been busy rattling each other's cages since Hutch had come up with the plan to wander unprotected along an empty stretch of beach into the waiting arms of Professor Gage, a man who killed people. Starsky had been unforgiving -- even more so when he was obliged to fire a volley into an unseen assailant that turned out to be female. Yes, one of those moments. Throwing himself to the sand, not knowing what his partner had seen and if he would be quick enough to save him from it. One of those moments that, later on, would require your grasp of the important things to be real and solid. Hutch was tired of it now. He hadn't died, had he? Starsky needed to lighten up, especially as he hadn't yet done any of the things he usually did to counteract the effects of firing bullets into people -- like getting drunk, or lying on Hutch's couch watching TV, getting sillier as the tension and disgust drained out of him. 

"I beg your pardon?" 

"Did you perform well enough to keep that car?" 

"Hutch, I don't have that kind of money." 

"That isn't what I asked you." 

"I already have a car and it's quite enough for me, thank you very much." 

"You already have a girlfriend but that doesn't seem quite enough for you, thank you very much." 

"Mary's not my girlfriend." 

"She know that? You've got a date with her this weekend remember." 

"A foursome with fishing rods. How could I forget?" 

"You liked the idea last weekend." 

Starsky looked up at the ceiling and stroked the underside of his jaw thoughtfully. "What are you up to?" he said. 

Hutch opened his mouth and closed it again, looked a little wounded, decided that wasn't working and then clapped his hands together to signify getting down to the nitty gritty. 

"Think you need to balance out your life a little, that's all." 

Starsky poked about in a bowl of olives and then licked his fingers. 

"Uh-huh," was all he said at first, and then, leaning his chair and tipping on to the back legs, "Don't begin anything with me, Hutch." The latter was delivered with such a harsh edge, such confident menace, that Hutch let it go straight away, there and then. 

Didn't stop him thinking though. 

*

"Good weekend?" 

Captain Dobey was being affable because so far nothing sinister had plopped on his desk this sunny Monday morning. 

"It was great, Cap, thanks." That was Hutchinson, looking dapper and glowing. The department's number one beach-boy. 

"Was OK." That was Starsky. He didn't like mornings much, sunny or not. 

Enough chit-chat already, Dobey thought, and went back into his office. 

Hutch squinted over the desk. "Only OK?" he said. "We thought you and Mary... you know." 

"Oh that's all over," Starsky said airily. 

All over _Over easy._

Damn. 

There was always some reason he came up with. Too easy. Too much hard work. Too high maintenance. What was the excuse going to be this time? 

Too nice? 

"Sorry to hear that, Starsk." 

Starsky shrugged. 

"And Catlin?" 

Starsky looked like he hardly knew the name. "A fruitcake." 

OK then. Too mad. 

While ostensibly reading over the report which was sitting in front of him he watched Starsky at work opposite. Flipping file pages. Stabbing at the buttons on the phone. Fighting with the typewriter. 

_What the hell was he going to go home to?_

It was a quiet Monday morning and he was free to indulge in the speculation, but it sent his stomach heading for the floor in sudden panic. 

"Starsky," he said at once, halting yet another trip out to get candy. "You know, Gage had some weird ideas, but he did have this way of getting you thinking." 

"What he get you thinking about, Hutch?" Starsky asked kindly. 

"Well, he had this thing..." Hutch pitched in, his voice starting to rise as his breathing began to get away from him. "The... 'the subtle and obvious ways we plan our own executions'. You see, what worries me, Starsk, is..." 

"Hey," Starsky said. He backed away from the door, came right round the desk and sat on Hutch's report. "You seeing Rachel tonight?" 

"I... no. She's probably going to stay in and wash her hair... with Mary." 

"Hmmm. Well, you mind if I come over to your place and maybe watch some TV?" He smiled. "It'd be good for ya." 

"Why?" Hutch demanded, pleased and appalled at the same time. 

"Because you think too much. You need to sort your life out. Get a little balance. You plan my execution and I'll plan yours... if you get my drift." 

Hutch looked at him sitting there with his leg swinging cheerily back and forth. 

"OK," he said. 

Starsky maintained eye contact as the breathing leveled out. He put a hand on the nearest shoulder to get himself on his feet again. As he passed behind on his way to the door the hand trailed across Hutch's shoulder blades and then dropped away. 

Hutch looked back down at his report. 

_You plan my execution and I'll plan yours? What in blue blazes was all that about?_

There was only an instant before Captain Dobey came crashing from his office and sent them out into the maelstrom where somebody, somewhere was about to get themselves killed. Just enough time for Hutch to think of the answer. 

Obvious really. Subtle and obvious, staring him in the face and then trailing across his shoulder-blades. 

It was Starsky's hold on the important things. 

-ends-


End file.
